This invention relates generally to a machine of the type used to heat and die cut letters, numerals or other characters and images from conventional vinyl plastic tape, such tape characteristically having an adhesive backing thereon whereby the characters die cut from the tape can be applied to surfaces of various kinds and descriptions such as automobile and truck bodies, warehouse shelving, cartons and containers, to name but a few.
Such machines generally speaking are well known and widely used at the present time. See for example the tape embossing machines disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,012, issued to M. Friedel on Sept. 9, 1975, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,753,482, issued to M. Brown, et al. on Aug. 21, 1973. Other prior art patents which disclose various types of printing machines having some structure more or less pertinent to the present invention include U.S. Pat. No. 1,300,342, issued to D. R. Campbell on Apr. 15, 1919; U.S. Pat. No. 3,768,619, issued to R. A. Lewis on Oct. 30, 1973; U.S. Pat. No. 3,267,850, issued to J. W. Ryan, et al. on Aug. 23, 1966; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,834,507, issued to F. C. Bradshaw on Sept. 10, 1974. See also the machine disclosed in West German Pat. No. 2,357,509, issued to W. Schaible on Nov. 15, 1973.
One of the difficulties encountered using prior art die cutting machines is that they do not provide means for varying the spacing between different printed characters to provide appropriate, proportional spacing between combinations of different characters.
Another of the difficulties encountered using such prior art die cutting machines to heat the characters to be duplicated on plastic tape is that they do not provide thermal isolation between the printing characters used to die cut and heat the tape during printing operations and other thermally conductive metallic elements of the machine. As a consequence, it is often difficult to maintain the desired level of heat on the printing characters after repeated use thereof.
Still another difficulty that has been encountered using such prior art machines is that a number of separate and distinct manually manipulative steps is often required to complete a single print cycle for a given character to be printed in the tape, by reason of which the machines print each character at a relatively slow rate of speed.
By means of my invention, these and other difficulties often encountered using such prior art machines are substantially overcome.